Tag: strange animals

Giant Squids (You Didn’t Ask for It)

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20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne. H.P. Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu. These fantasies feature giant squids, or something very like them.

I like a plate of fried calamari. But the giant squid–50 feet long, sometimes longer: nobody really knows for sure–well, that’s another story. A very dramatic one: here’s a clip from the movie.

Anyhow, we don’t know how many gigantic squids there might be in the ocean, how they live, how big they get to be, etc., etc. Sperm whales eat them. Big squids wash up on the shore, dead as doornails. I don’t think anyone has ever seen a live one…

And lived to tell about it.

The Attack of the Giant Bird

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Image result for giant bird grabs lowe child, illinois

What do you make of this? It appears to be a true story. ( http://cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/lawndale07/ )

July 25, 1977, Lawndale, Illinois: Ten-year-old Marlon Lowe was playing outside with his friends when a gigantic bird, with an estimated 10-foot wingspan, swooped down from the sky and attacked the children. It zeroed in on Marlon and snatched him up.

Marlon’s mother, Ruth, screamed in horror. There were, it is said, seven adult eyewitnesses. But then, maybe because the boy was struggling so hard, maybe because he was just a bit too heavy, the big bird dropped him and flew away.

Image result for giant bird grabs lowe child, illinois

Ruth and Marlon Lowe (not much the worse for wear)

Witnesses describe it as a kind of giant vulture or condor, although no such bird is known to live in North America. (There are very few California condors left alive, and their whereabouts are strictly monitored.)

What was this bird, and where did it go? Where is it now? How many of its kind exist–if they exist at all?

Food for thought, eh?

A Most Unusual Animal

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Here’s a critter some of you may never have heard of before–the pangolin. It’s an ant-eating beast that lives in Africa and can’t be rhymed with anything. If it was a few hundred times larger, it would look like something that wrecked Tokyo while fighting with Godzilla.

Because the pangolin’s front claws are so huge, it has to walk on its hind legs, all slouched over. Very poor posture!

Look at the size of the hole it digs, getting at the ants. I think you might almost rather have the ants in your back yard.

Please feel free to try to think of something that rhymes with “pangolin.”